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We've Got Data

Two years ago, after attending SXSW, we were struck by how little data we could find that would help explain what is going on with online harassment. So we decided to conduct an online survey to see what we could learn ourselves. The output of that effort is now ready to share.

Our survey was conducted between July 2013 and February 2014. While the press attention to the “revenge porn” phenomenon has grown dramatically during this time, our survey was broader. It sought to understand the experiences of online harassment victims and survivors of all kinds.

We hope the results summarized in this preliminary report are a useful step in understanding the nature of online harassment, the challenges encountered by those who experience it, and the strategies for how to address it. We also hope these results will spur future, larger and more in depth studies (with qualitative interviews, ethnographic studies, funded surveys with random selections of larger numbers of participants, and the like) to provide data to regulators, industry, and the public on the prevalence and impact of online harassment, and to work towards solutions to end it.

We are grateful for the input in forming the survey instrument from our board and others working in the field of online safety and privacy. And we especially want to call out Dan Taube and Keely Kolmes from our board of advisors who spent countless hours developing the survey instrument, negotiating the IRB-approval process, studying the results, and drafting this preliminary report.